Resources by Gabrielle Thomas

Early in my academic career, I received a piece of advice that I have never quite forgotten. I had received a few teaching awards and proudly added them to my CV. A senior colleague looked over the document and gently suggested that I remove them.The reasoning was simple: teaching awards might make it look like I wasn’t a serious researcher.The logic behind the advice was not unusual. In many research universities, there is an unspoken hierarchy of academic value. Research sits at the top. Grants, books, and journal articles signal seriousness. Teaching, by contrast, is often treated as something secondary—a duty rather than a scholarly accomplishment. A teaching award, in this logic, signals that you spend too much time in the classroom and not enough time producing research.What struck me even then was the implication behind the advice. It assumed that excellence in teaching and excellence in research exist in tension with one another. If you are recognized as a good teacher, the assumption goes, you must be neglecting the work that truly counts. As the author of three books—two of which are published by Cambridge University Press—with a fourth on the way, I reject this premise. In my own work on early Christianity, teaching has never been separate from research. Explaining Gregory of Nazianzus (my personal favourite) to students forces clarity about arguments that can otherwise remain comfortably obscure. Students ask questions that expose assumptions. They notice ambiguities that scholars sometimes overlook. Again and again, the classroom becomes a place where ideas are re-examined.Teaching is not the absence of scholarship. It is one of the places where scholarship happens.There is also something revealing about the warning itself. Early-career-scholars—especially women—often receive subtle signals about what kinds of work will be taken seriously. Mentoring students and investing in pedagogy can be quietly coded as “soft” labour. The message is not always explicit, but it is clear enough: if you want to be seen as a real scholar, do not look too invested in teaching or in your students.The irony is that universities depend on that very labour. Students do not encounter research outputs directly; they encounter them through teaching. The classroom is where the intellectual traditions of a discipline are actually transmitted. To treat excellence in teaching as a sign of diminished scholarly seriousness misunderstands how academic life works.I did not remove the teaching awards from my CV.The advice was offered with genuine care—but the premise behind it is broken. The problem is not that teaching awards appear on a CV. The problem is the academic culture that once made many scholars think they should not.

On rotation, I teach a graduate-level course entitled “Introduction to Early Christian Thought.” And every year — in the week of course evaluations — I have a conversation with my students that has become an important feature of their education: a conversation about how teaching evaluations are gendered.Once you’ve seen the pattern, you can’t unsee it. Men are routinely described as “brilliant,” “authoritative,” or “the best lecturer I’ve ever had.” Women, by contrast, are “kind,” “caring,” “approachable,” “compassionate,” or “pastoral.” Men “really know their stuff.” Women “really care about students.” Expertise attaches to men; emotional labour attaches to women.The same holds for grading. Students often expect women to be gentler, more flexible, more indulgent. A male lecturer who grades firmly is “rigorous” or “serious.” A woman who does the same may quickly become “harsh” or “unfair.”Having taught in three different academic institutions over the past decade, I have several examples which have made this very clear. I’ll mention just one here: a student received a B from me and a B from a male colleague. The student challenged my grade — not his. Same work, same outcome, different reaction. Nearly every woman in academia has a version of this story.I speak openly with my students, then, about gender bias before they write evaluations. Not because I want to avoid critique — I value thoughtful critique — but because evaluations stick. Many evaluations I receive are positive and thoughtful. Some are wonderfully memorable. My personal favourite is “Professor Thomas is a badass.” But, it is hard to forget that I “grade like a man.”ResearchRecent work in higher-education research confirms what many women have long observed:A large-scale experimental study found that female instructors receive significantly lower evaluations than male instructors for identical teaching, even when students never interact with the instructor in person (MacNell, Driscoll & Hunt, Innovative Higher Education, 2015).A 2025 analysis using natural-language processing on tens of thousands of comments showed that men are more frequently praised for “competence” and “authority,” while women receive comments about warmth and personality, regardless of teaching quality (Zamora & Ayllón, 2025).A comprehensive review argues that student evaluations often reflect biases — including gender — more than they reflect actual learning or teaching effectiveness (Uttl, White & Gonzalez, Studies in Educational Evaluation, 2017).These are not small effects; they are systemic patterns. What I Ask of My StudentsSo I ask students to pause before they complete an evaluation and consider a few questions:Am I using different language for a woman than I would for a man?Am I expecting more emotional labour — more nurturing, more availability — from this instructor?Am I reacting to discomfort about standards or grades by labelling them “unfair”?Am I evaluating teaching, or evaluating whether this lecturer fits my image of what authority looks like?Honest evaluations are essential. Students should say what worked, what didn’t, what could be clearer or more engaging. But fairness requires noticing our assumptions. It asks us to evaluate teaching rather than gender stereotypes.If we care about justice and equity in higher education, one simple starting point is here: noticing the words we use, the labels we reach for, and the people we instinctively challenge first. Notes & BibliographyMacNell, L., Driscoll, A., & Hunt, A. N. (2015). “What’s in a Name: Exposing Gender Bias in Student Ratings of Teaching.” Innovative Higher Education, 40, 291–303.Uttl, B., White, C. A., & Gonzalez, D. (2017). “Meta-analysis of faculty gender and teaching evaluations.” Studies in Educational Evaluation, 54, 22–42.Zamora, C., & Ayllón, S. (2025). “Gender Bias in Qualitative Course Evaluations: Evidence from NLP Methods.” (Open-access working paper).

Welcome back to Common Questions! In this series, we bring together some of the most esteemed scholars and educators in the field to engage with a central, thought-provoking question. The goal is to challenge and inspire. By exploring these questions, we hope to create a dynamic platform for scholarly dialogue, illuminate complexities in education, and enhance our understanding of the transformative power of teaching and learning in these vital disciplines. Featuring a diverse range of perspectives, this effort is a means of expanding the borders of academic rigor with profound spiritual and philosophical inquiry. This time, we asked…What about your work do you find most beautiful? What would it take to plan for more of this kind of beauty in your work?Gathered here are responses from:Sonya Cronin, Florida State University / The Carrier Pigeon PostJoshua Ryoo, Azusa Pacific UniversityGabrielle Thomas, Emory UniversityBrian Hillman, Towson UniversityAndrew P. Wilson, Mount Allison UniversityWonchul Shin, Villanova UniversityIf you are interested in sharing you response to this prompt or future Common Questions, please reach out to our blogs editor, Donald E. Quist at quistd@wabash.edu.